#497 Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

Ellen used to think up ways to kill her daddy, but in the end, she didn’t have to do it. He pretty much killed himself. He didn’t use a gun or a rope, but hard-living got the best of him and he ended up dead, holed up in his own house for who knows how long. Ellen was gone by then; she had left.

She had already decided living with her daddy wasn’t a good life. Her mama had taken a bunch of pills and her daddy wouldn’t let her call an ambulance or anything so her mother died. Ellen has found herself a new family, where she gets enough to eat, has her own room, and can go riding on a pony, but it wasn’t the first house she tried.

When Ellen still lived with her daddy she often escaped from him to her friend Starletta’s house. Starletta is not white like Ellen and lives in a small shack. There is no running water, but Starletta’s family is kind to Ellen. They know she doesn’t have the best life and they welcome her to stay as much as she wants to, but Ellen has not yet learned to trust people who aren’t the same race as her.

First, Ellen tries her aunt, but her aunt tells her she cannot stay but for the weekend. Then the school intervenes and she stays with the art teacher, who is a good person, but the court steps in and Ellen is sent to live with her maternal grandmother. Her grandmother is not kind to her. She makes her work in the fields picking cotton and always looks down on her because of who her father is. The woman never has a kind remark for Ellen, but Ellen takes care of her despite that. It turns out that her grandmother was actually quite sick and does die. After that Ellen goes to live with another aunt, who tolerates her for a while, but the situation doesn’t work out because her aunt only has eyes for her daughter and not for Ellen.

Ellen spies a woman in church who has lots of different children. She asks about her and determines that she will be her new mama.

What I liked

Poor Ellen has a rough life. I liked that she learned to get above it though. She didn’t let the fact that her parents were dead really hold her back. She didn’t let the fact that her grandmother was mean as a snake to her hold her back. She went on with life. She’s resilient in a way that many people aren’t. You really have to admire someone like Ellen. She takes her own life into her hands and just goes on about her business.

I also really liked that Ellen learned to realize that Starletta was a person just the same as her. In the beginning of the story, Ellen thought she was going to get some kind of germs from Starletta because her skin was a different color. Ellen learns that this is not the case and Starletta is just like her. This is a grand realization for someone so young. Small children often do not care about race, but they can be taught through action and word to be prejudiced by the time they’re several years old. This is what happened to Ellen. She didn’t do this herself, but was taught, probably not outright, but she was taught to distrust anyone who wasn’t the same race as herself. I’m glad that she was able to reprogram herself and be more trusting.

What I didn’t like

I was watching Call the Midwife last night(it’s a British show based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth and her time as a midwife in London). I like the show; it deals with a lot of issues of the day and also issues that have always existed. The episode last night was about four neglected children. Their mother would go off and just leave them for a day or two at a time, when the youngest was a baby. They were filthy and hungry. They had nobody there for them. The oldest boy, who had to be only seven or eight, took care of them himself or tried to. It was just about the saddest thing.

I don’t understand why or how people could do anything like that. I don’t understand what’s in certain people to treat a child in such a manner. I cannot imagine what went through Ellen’s father’s head in order for him to treat her so. If Ellen had not left when she did, things would have been very bad for her. I just can’t comprehend the fact that someone could be so terrible to their own children.

It almost makes me want to say that some people just don’t deserve children, but how are you supposed to know that a person is like that before they actually have a child? It’s a question for the ages. It’s just something we have to try to clean up as a society because we can’t tell who is and who isn’t going to take care of their children before they have them. It’s up to us to pick up those pieces after a person like Ellen’s father rolls through the world.

Overall

I think in a twisted way, this is a really good book for foster children to read. It shows them that they can be somebody and they don’t have to suffer.

Weigh in

If you were in the same situation as Ellen had been in, would you leave your home?

Do you believe that Ellen being appreciated and cared for made her more able to appreciate Starletta?



abusing children, bad home life, books about foster children, ellen, Ellen Foster, Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, foster care, foster children, Kaye Gibbons, mean grandmother, neglecting children, starletta
Coming of age, Family dynamics, Fiction, Finding Your Self, Gibbons-Kaye, Social Commentary
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#431 The Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer

The Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer

I hadn’t intended on reading this book so soon, but I kind of picked it up and couldn’t put it down. It wasn’t as much of a tear-jerker as I had expected, but it was still quite touching and disconcerting. It was also very insightful into the way the foster-care system works.

At the beginning of the book, David still lives with his family. He has other brothers, who live in the house and get to eat food, but he doesn’t. He lives in the garage. He does chores. He is told to steal food. He is made to throw up. He is grabbed and pushed down on the floor. One night he is even shoved out of his own house. He goes away for a while before being taken right back into his abusive household. No one else in the house is treated as badly as he is; it’s just him. He used to be considered part of the family, but David thinks he did something to upset his mother. She tells him he’s bad and he believes it.

When David does finally get out, it happens very quickly. Teachers suspect something is up. They call the authorities. A police officer comes to pick David up. They take him to a foster home. He’s not sure what to expect, but a social worker works with him. There is a court case and David is scared to testify against his mother. He is scared she’ll take him back because she always wins. The judge says that David should be a ward of the state. This isn’t the end of David’s mother’s efforts.

David has trouble adjusting to life outside of an abusive home. He steals things. He tries to show off for other kids. He wants everyone to like him badly. David’s mother brings a case against him to have him put away in a mental hospital. This case is strengthened when David is sent to juvenile hall for a fire he didn’t start. David is bounced around foster homes for a while, before finally spending a fairly long stretch at his last foster home. All the people treat him well, but they have their own problems as well.

David learns to work hard and to support himself. He still desperately seeks approval from his family, but he doesn’t find it in this book. David does learn that he can be of worth on his own.

What I liked

I liked learning about David’s life. I liked learning more about how child protective services, juvenile hall, and foster care systems work. David’s story was very insightful in that manner.

What I didn’t like

I haven’t read the previous book that David wrote, A Child Called It. I don’t know half of what David actually went through, but how could anybody do this to a child? How  could anybody treat their own child so badly? How could anybody expose anybody to anything like this? How could a person be so cruel? How could a person have so much evil inside of them? How did this poor kid ever grow up to be an adult? I can’t imagine what David goes through. I’m sure he’s progressed so much, but can you imagine having to live with what David has to live with? He’s scarred forever. Forever.

My upbringing wasn’t the greatest, but I wasn’t physically abused like David, but even so, I still have scars, not physical scars, but emotional scars from the way I was raised and some of the happenings that went on. I was very lucky in many aspects as I was growing up, but even so, I still have my problems. It’s just so difficult for me to comprehend what David has to go through, has had to go through to be even a half-way functioning adult.

As a result of the shooting in Santa Barbara I had the chance to read many women’s stories about abuse they suffered in their lives because they were women. Many of these women grew up in the ideal communities and lived in the ideal family, as it appeared, but their stories of abuse are so sad. I don’t understand why someone else feels they can ruin another person’s life. What makes a person have such a complex that they think they can treat a person so badly?

I mentioned in my book haul post when I bought this book that the little boy on the cover looks like one of my little brothers when he was little. He was no angel, in fact, he was a first-class brat, but if someone had done anything like this to him, I would be furious. There were times growing up when things got a little rough in my house, just a little. It’s frustrating when you’re a kid and you can’t do anything about your siblings being treated terribly. I really can’t imagine what David’s siblings went through. They saw their broken family and they saw their brother being abused, but they were kids and they couldn’t do anything about it.

I disliked that people had this attitude that foster kids must behave so badly so that was the reason they were in foster care. It’s not true. I know people who have fostered children. Those poor kids come from terrible situations. I know a family who took in a little boy and his parents didn’t even say anything to them when they stopped on the side of the road to hand him over. They simply handed him over like he was a sack of potatoes. That was one of the sweetest little boys I have ever met. There are people who open up their homes anytime of the day or night when a child needs help. They have clothes ready. They have diapers ready. They have lice shampoo ready. They have food ready. They answer the call when no one else is willing. They take in kids who are  beaten, raped, molested, yelled at, cussed at, and even locked away like animals into their homes and love them. That is dedication. That is a love of humankind.

It’s never ok to discount a kid because they’re in foster care. That child is still a person and has just as much potential as any other child.

Overall

I think David has probably done a lot to show other kids in similar situations that you can get out alive. You can make it.



abuse, books about abused children, dave pelzer, david pelzer, foster care, foster children, foster homes, memoirs about foster care systems, memoirs of abused children, the lost boy, the lost boy by dave pelzer
inspirational, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Pelzer-Dave, social commentary
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